Dearly Beloved: MCK tribute to Kenny Le May at his memorial in LA 4/23/16

Dearly Beloved…

We are gathered here today….

To help each other get through this thing called...

LIFE!

And damn man, this thing called life gets hard, in all kinda ways we never plan these days, don’t it?

But let’s not ever let this thing called life get so hard, that we can’t come together to honor a man who truly seemed to know how to live it right, right?!?

For those of you here who don’t know who I am, my name is Matt Koelling.

I was, no wait, I AM, a friend of Kenny’s.

Yesterday, I was on my way back here to LA from Philly, coming back from another funeral this week, but knew today I was gonna get up here to speak.

Anyone familiar with me, knows I can sometimes be prone to terminal verbosity. So on the flight back last night, figured I’d write Kenny a note, since this is now the longest gap in 15 years we hadn’t been in contact, so I’ll read it to him while with you…

Whattup Ken,

Prince is dead.

My friend Angel (Nasuti’s girl) is too.

You know him, obviously, but I believe you met her too, back during my South Bay days, around ‘04/’05 when those two still lived down in Long Beach.

And that help you were telling me to get him when we spoke on it that night, well…much like you were more often than I readily admitted, you were right.

“Never leave your brother behind”-K. Le May

So now that’s something that his sister, brother, and me/we are gonna be trying to do, and for some reason, I gotta feeling he’s gonna make it thru.

You may not have been the biggest Prince Fan, but you knew that I am.

But you gave him credit on the big stuff…his 80’s classics, the guitar-playing or prolific pen, an ability to seize big moments (like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame or Super Bowl) as a performer, artist, etc.

Not sure why we’re talking music, but while here I gotta say Ken, I’m still mad about that time you said Justin Timberlake was as talented as Michael Jackson, or when you said Kid Rock was one of the most innovative artists of our generation.

You knew that was gonna make me apoplectic.

That was black-belt trolling before social-media.

Just for that, I gotta let everyone here know Kenny LeMay’s favorite Rihanna song was “Pour It Up“.

That’s right, Kenny had a favorite Rihanna song.

I have multiple texts, unsolicited, to prove it right here on my phone. Kenny sent me three messages on RiRi during the first two months of 2016.

But lemme stop playing you in front of your people.

Suppose if I had to pick a favorite Rihanna song, mine would now be “Stay”…much like I truly wish that you….with every fiber of my being, had been able to do, at least for a little longer.

At least that way, instead of being up here in this crowded crying room, it’d be just another beautiful spring Saturday afternoon in Southern California.

Meanwhile, we’d probably be ready to hit up the pier, or hang up to your top deck, to “Pour It Up”.

Unfortunately, as we learned once again two days ago, “Sometimes It Snows In April”.

Meanwhile, most of us are still trying to dig up out from underneath the avalanche that came crashing down upon all those who love you in early March.

My bad…I lied when I said that I’m not sure why I’m up here talking about music with you.

It’s for the same reason I talk sports with you.

For the same reason I loved to argue with you.

Same reason I tested out my best comedy on you.

Same reason there is no one else I’ve ever watched more concert movies and music documentaries, exponentially after midnight, in my entire life.

The very same reason that you were always my first place to go whenever I had that overwhelmed feeling, the one I get whenever I let something drag on for too long, so long it became embedded into my subconscious brain, in waves that not even an avoidant-behavior ninja like me could push away.

Some seemingly enormous burden that I’d been carrying around LA, on my shoulders, all alone.

Whether it was a job issue, an affair of the heart, or driving around Los Angeles in an untrustworthy vehicle with expired NJ tags, for ludicrous amounts of time, for which I won’t incriminate myself here.

Because you’d hear me and you’d get it…
you always did…
even when you didn’t…
because if not, rather than smile and nod, you would actually stop me, pressing pause to indicate when, where, if, or sometimes why, you didn’t get it.

That way I could decode it by articulating it to you, or maybe eventually realize why that worry, or idea, wasn’t really worth the energy in the first place.

But we mighta had to toss it around a bit, debate it, for a few minutes, hours, or even a full day or two, while navigating between those two points.

Kinda like I’m now negotiating thru this space.

But how you do that without your sounding board?

Where My Brotha At?!?

My West Coast Consigliere?!?

One of the biggest factors in how I’ve survived in Los Angeles over these past 13 years?

One of the main reasons I knew that everything would be cool even before getting here?

The dude who dubbed me “Matty Rapper”, several years before I’d even written an original rhyme?

It’s been nearly two months since Mitra called that night, but that’s an answer I’m still trying to find.

But who would I be to go all woe-is-me.

I know that time of love, laughs, and life that you provided for many, including me, is more than 99% of this planet‘s population is ever blessed to see.

Draft Day is around the corner.

Wishing you were gonna be around to DVR it for me, so we could go into airplane/armchair mode as usual, with many pauses plus smoke-breaks, filled with excited speculation intermittently in between.

Don’t think I’m gonna even bother to watch it this year, without having you along for the ride.

Not to mention, the Eagles just made a trade eerily reminiscent of the one your Skins made for RGIII.

But anyway, Prince is dead.

That’s what the news said.

Still, his music, much like my memories of you, will continue to play, on and on, till the break of dawn, pumping loud and clear between my ears, whether on some headphones, or in my mind’s eye.

True Legends Never Die.

So consider this just one small way, to thank you my brotha, because like Little Michael used to sing, ”I’m never gonna say goodbye”.